


silhouettes with no regrets

by ambassadorofchill



Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - No Powers, Angst, F/F, Friends to Lovers, Gen, Mutual Pining, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-03-17
Updated: 2017-03-22
Packaged: 2018-10-06 18:19:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,849
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10341534
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ambassadorofchill/pseuds/ambassadorofchill
Summary: Alex doesn't think anything of Maggie when they first meet. Maggie can't think of anything else.





	1. finally found a girl that you couldn’t impress

**January 2010**

The college party, by rule, is composed of a few crucial elements: the thumping bass of some generic top 40 nonsense, the vague sickening smell of spilled alcohol, and a thick curtain of desperation. And, if you don’t watch where you’re going, the puke of some freshman that nobody remembers even inviting anyway. Alex Danvers learns that last part the hard way and now she’s stuck trying to calculate whether it would be more disgusting to lose the shoes and suffer exposing her bare feet to whatever else might be hidden on the floor, or, keep the shoes and smell like the tragic last act of an after school special.

The one night she begrudgingly agrees to be the designated driver for her younger sister, Kara, she gets (literally) stuck in a corner weighing a gross catch-22.

At least it doesn’t seem like anyone else has noticed her problem, too engrossed in trying to get as drunk as they can or get laid - or both. It’s her last semester in Berkeley and normally she wouldn’t even bother with some stupid house party but apparently tonight Kara heard from a friend who heard from another friend that her longtime crush, James Olsen, was reeling from a breakup and might be in search of a shoulder to lean on. And, of course, Kara just needed to be that shoulder.

So here Alex is, instead of getting ahead on her readings or working on her senior honors thesis or even checking in to her work lab and making sure her experiments are staying on schedule. 

“Heeeeey,” Alex rolls her eyes all the way into the back of her head at the smarmy, drunken slur of Maxwell Lord. “Nobody puts Alex Danvers in a corner.”

The music isn’t nearly as loud in this part of the house and, for once, Alex longs to pretend that she’s really that into the latest Jason Derulo or Kelly Clarkson or whatever it is her radio is blasting when she lets Kara borrow her car. But her body’s hate reflex gives her away and there’s no doubt in Maxwell’s mind that she’s noticed him.

“Good one.” It can barely be considered a comeback and maybe if she wasn’t so goddamn sober, and uncomfortable, she would have tried harder. But now she’s got puke shoes and a guy who makes her want to puke - a matching set.

Kara’s going to owe her, like, the single most epic sister night in the history of sister nights. Alex is talking cookie dough ice cream, with the cookie dough not picked out of it, more than half the order of pot stickers and she gets to pick the pizza toppings. And the movie, Alex adds as an afterthought because it’s all for naught if she gets stuck watching 500 Days of Summer for the hundredth time.

She cranes her head to try and peek around Maxwell’s rapidly encroaching form for some glimpse of her sister. He smells like the kind of expensive cologne that circles back around to smelling like Axe again; if Alex was drinking it might be enough to make her puke on the other shoe.

Now the music blasting through the house has a feeling that tonight is going to be a good night - a good, good night even - but given her current situation, Alex is highly doubting that. 

“I didn’t,” Maxwell hiccups and takes a sip of his pretentious little microbrew to chase it then continue to stand there like he’s somehow wanted. He doesn’t finish his thought, just stares at her like he’s mentally trying to convey subject and predicate through sheer power of drunken will.

“Good talk, as always Maxwell.” Alex pushes away from her little corner of hell. Her shoe problem isn’t dependent on this particular piece of wall and the company is decidedly lacking. There’s a back patio just through the kitchen and the combination of it being a Maxwell-free zone is more than appealing.

“Wait, wait, wait,” Maxwell brackets her against the wall with his non-beer holding hand and Alex is about five seconds away from demonstrating what she’s learned in the Krav Maga class she took for credit last semester. “Don’t go, we’re fun having, wait-” He trails off and seems to find his inability to string together basic thoughts the most hilarious thing this side of a Dane Cook comedy special. 

Alex remembers the regrettable semester they’d actually dated, a brief moment of insanity in an otherwise stable existence. She remembers the strange dates at the most expensive restaurants in the East Bay that catered to the rich and the bored, far too grown up for a pair of 18-year-olds. When Maxwell wasn’t trying to buy her prolonged interest, they really didn’t have that much in common so Alex broke it off right before summer break and Maxwell, being The Maxwell Lord, heir to Lord Industries has been trying to prove something to her ever since.

Being the white whale that got away to a douchey CEO-in-waiting isn’t as appealing as it sounds.

Regrettably Alex doesn’t get to punch Maxwell, not even a little. Alex must be sending out some pretty heavy ‘please, dear god, get away from me’ vibes, so much so that a small woman taps on Maxwell’s shoulder. He reacts to the new stimuli as gracefully as you’d expect and sort of stumbles away from Alex, eyes squinting like he’s trying to manually snap his vision into sober focus.

“Hey girl, I’ve been looking all over for you!” The small woman says with so much enthusiasm that for a moment Alex is convinced that this is someone she actually knows and she feels vaguely guilty that she’s only being found by her now. The woman loops an arm around Alex’s waist and steers Alex away from Maxwell, who, if Alex knows him well, is already distracted by a shiny object or his face in the mirror.

She realizes that she’s walked cuddled up to this woman that she absolutely does not know through the den and out through the kitchen to the back patio. They stop next to some mismatched patio furniture that looks like it’s been accumulated over years of dumpster diving on student move-out day at the dorms. A wicker chair with the bottom half worn out, a glass patio table with a slot for an umbrella that doesn’t exist, and lounge chair with plastic slats that actually looks like it was stolen from an outdoor pool. 

“I saw that guy bothering you and figured I’d give you a hand,” The woman smiles and shrugs unassumingly like the sort of aw shucks type that used to show up in the black-and-white police procedurals Alex watched with her dad as a kid. “Women gotta stick together, ya know.”

Alex is comfortable for about a half second until she realizes she must smell terrible and that sends a flush up her neck that doesn’t quite reach her cheeks but might as well. Alex wraps her arms around herself and is thankful that it’s cold enough outside to pass the action off as a desire for warmth.

“Thanks, but I could have handled him.” Alex always has trouble trying to smooth out the edges when she feels embarrassed and she almost wants to with the way that hurt briefly flashes in the other woman’s eyes. It’s gone before Alex gets a chance to right her wrong, the smile is gone too replaced with a neutral expression too blank to be true.

There’s a roar from inside the house and people start chanting ‘shots, shots, shots’ to the tune of that terrible LMFAO song. Alex doesn’t have to look inside to know that the body shots have started and it’s officially time for her to find Kara and get them the hell out of here.

“My bad,” The woman holds her hands up defensively and reminds Alex that she’s still there. Alex is drawn to her leather jacket and the soft, warm looking grey sweater underneath it. “He a friend of yours?”

Alex laughs and shakes her head, momentarily disturbed by the thought that anybody could mistake her and Maxwell for friends. “A semester long mistake.”

“Ah, well, I hope you’ve got better taste now.” The woman shoves her hands in her pockets and Alex wonders for a moment if she feels stifled by the awkward obligation of conversing with the person she rescued, for lack of better word.

Because Alex definitely was about to punch Maxwell Lord and it was going to be so so cathartic.

The relative silence overtakes them again and Alex listens to the raucous sound of LMFAO urging people on to alcohol poisoning in a fun way. She wonders what the etiquette is on ditching this conversation while it’s still only kind of awkward and going to find Kara. She wonders, briefly, why she cares if there’s a delicate way to do it.

“I should get back to my friends.” The woman adds when it’s clear that Alex is spaced out and clearly not going to engage. “I’m Maggie, by the way.”

Maggie, Alex tries it out in her head and her not-so-savior both is and isn’t a Maggie in the same way that everyone doesn’t seem like their name until you really get to know them. At least, it’s not the name that Alex would have guessed if that was a thing that people prompted you to do, which is a weird thing to think. Now she’s tired and starting to ramble nonsensically in her own thoughts.

Despite Maggie’s insistence that she should get back to her friends she’s still standing in front of Alex with an expectantly annoyed look on her face. Alex thinks it’s sort of funny how someone can look so perturbed and open at the same time. Like the crinkle between Maggie’s eyebrows isn’t in agreement with the wry smirk on her lips.

“And you are…”

“Oh.”

“Nice to meet you, Oh.”

Alex decides right then and there that Maggie is sort of a jerk and maybe she just goes around parties saving women from men so she can be a jerk to them herself.

“Alex,” LMFAO fades into Milkshake and Alex wonders if maybe someone older has finally taken control of the playlist. “And I have to go. Thanks again, Maggie.” She doesn’t wait to see if Maggie responds and really, didn’t she say she had to meet up with her friends anyway? Alex is doing her a favor by leaving first.

She doesn’t look back.

It’s unbearably stuffy inside the house after having been outside in the cold, even for only a few minutes. Alex pulls out her phone and flips it open, she dials Kara’s number and plugs her other ear so she can hear a little better. Kara answers and Alex can’t hear a word she’s saying, she yells for Kara to meet her outside by the car and ends the call, hoping her message has gotten through.

Outside by her car, a hand-me-down 2003 Ford Escape, passed down when her mom bought a new car, Alex finally takes off her shoes and tosses them in the trunk of her car. Getting into the driver's seat, she takes hand sanitizer from the center console and applies it liberally. She starts the car and lets the heat warm up the vehicle. The radio is turned down low enough that she barely can make out the song but she keeps replaying the unfortunate series of events of the night in her head. She waits a few minutes and wonders if maybe Kara didn’t get her message at all. Alex is about to call again when there’s a jaunty knock on her window and the car door opens.

Kara ducks in, wide smile and sparkling eyes not at all in sync with Alex’s ‘let’s get the hell out of here’ mood. Alex pulls away from the curb as soon as she hears Kara’s seatbelt click, she’s not even looking at Kara and she can practically feel her intense need to share something.

Alex wraps her fingers around the steering wheel and puts on a smile for the sake of her sister’s excitement. “Go ahead, tell me all about James Olsen and his smile and his big strong arms or whatever.”

“He was so sad when I first saw him, Alex, like, you know how I always tell you he’s got the best smile in Berkeley.”

“How could I forget.”

“Well, there was none of that and then we hung out and I got his mind off of Lucy-”

“Kara…”

“Gross. We talked and played Pokemon Snap on Winn’s old Nintendo 64.”

“Wait,” Alex almost wants to pull the car over and glare at her oh-so-chipper sister who apparently dragged her to a house party to play video games in a relatively clean room that probably had zero puke in it at all. “Did you even drink?”

“About that, don’t be mad.” Kara’s puppy eyes don’t even need to be seen to be Alex’s weakness, she can just feel them on her. It breaks her resolve every time, even when she has legitimate reasons to be mad.

Because if Kara didn’t drink then Kara could have just borrowed Alex’s car like Alex suggested in the first place and then she could have avoided Maxwell Lord, Maggie the Probably Jerk with a savior complex, and, she cannot stress this enough, standing in human vomit.

“...I’ll let you pick the movie next time and we can get any pizza you want, even that buffalo chicken pizza that is way too spicy for humans to eat.” 

Alex realizes that she zoned out and if she didn’t know the route to their house on autopilot she’d be more concerned that she did so while driving a car. She gets the gist that Kara realizes she owes Alex big time, even without knowing about Alex’s night.

“Sold.” Alex responds because she figures Kara probably threw in the extra potstickers and the cookie dough in the space where Alex wasn’t listening. It would be the decent thing to do and Kara is nothing if not aggressively decent.

They finally make it to the house and Alex prays that Mike is asleep and not waiting up for them - Kara, if Alex is being honest - but trying to make it seem like he absolutely isn’t waiting up for them at all. If Alex had it her way they would have evicted him and found a new roommate when he and Kara broke up a few months ago but Kara claimed it would be cruel to break his heart and leave him homeless at the same time.

Sometimes Alex thinks that her sister needs to be a little less decent. Especially when it comes to obnoxious roommates/ex-boyfriends who clearly want her back.

After her trifecta of awful, someone is clearly watching out for her because she opens the front door and the house is dark save for a lamp on the end table by the couch. Mike is either sleeping or not home and Alex doesn’t care which is which. Her feet are hurting from walking on asphalt and she desperately needs a shower and sleep.

Kara hugs her goodnight and Alex kisses her temple and ruffles her hair a bit.

Between 2am and 5am is the only time their shower doesn’t pump out water that’s either aggressively hot or aggressively cold, so, Alex is actually blessed with a shower that restores some of her humanity lost in a night of sweaty grime and strange encounters.

Even as she towels off and gets ready for bed she can’t help but to think back to the strangest encounter of them all. Not Maxwell, he’d been drunkenly trying to get her back or prove he’s over her at parties and bars and labs and planes and trains and automobiles for the last three years. Alex would feel weird if she went more than a month or so without that.

No, the thing that stuck with her the most was Maggie. Maggie who she’ll probably never see again and she barely said 10 words to but still left such an impression that Alex can somehow be simultaneously thankful for and annoyed by her.

It’s no use dwelling on it because Alex is making Kara find someone else to designated drive her probably sober ass around and Alex focuses her thoughts on something much more pleasant.

Like punching Maxwell Lord.

She falls asleep with a small smile on her face.


	2. you know that i could use somebody

When Alex was a kid, her mother had a magnet on the refrigerator that read in loopy, manufactured cursive that ‘home is where the heart is’. At the time it seemed like such a natural sentiment to Alex because where else would her heart possibly be? It was logical as the only child of a doting father and an attentive mother that their loving home, certainly, was the only place for her heart.

Then along came Kara after her parents, colleagues of Alex’s father, passed away under tragic circumstances. All of a sudden, her attentive mother split that attention in two, only, it seemed like the weight never balanced in Alex’s favor. The addition of Kara to the family threw off the natural order of things. The dynamics that Alex had grown accustomed to through the first 14 years of her life were gone, replaced by something so alien and unfamiliar.

By the time her father dropped dead one year later, the already wrought dynamics spun out of control. Maybe that’s why Alex fell so hard in love with the sciences. Most people assumed that her parents love of science naturally rubbed off on her. Sure that explained her natural aptitude but, in truth, science was the only thing that made sense when everything else didn’t. Finding patterns and answers in the vast unknowable using logic and reasoning gave Alex a mental escape from everything that was happening at home.

As Alex grew up and came to terms with the fact that Kara’s arrival into her life wasn’t some harbinger of terrible things to come, the two became closer but Midvale (and her relationship with her mother) was never quite the same. Instead Alex found a new home in her studies, in the lab. Berkeley called out to her as much as Midvale seemed to eject her from its constricting existence. 

She met Dr. J’onn J’onzz in her sophomore year at Berkeley when she took his Biophysical Chemistry course. Generally sophomores didn’t take upper division courses but between her AP credit and summer courses, Alex already had the credits of a junior. Their first few interactions were disastrous to put it kindly. His classroom style was best described as tough love with an emphasis on tough and Alex’s inability to admit defeat led to more than a few lecture derailing arguments. When she walked into his classroom every Tuesday and Thursday, it was like her body was preparing for battle.

That all changed after the midterm exam. Unsurprisingly (to Alex, anyway, she can’t speak for Dr. J’onnz) she easily earned the highest grade in the course. After all of their debate and disagreement, Dr. J’onnz couldn’t keep the approving slight lip quirk off his face when he handed back her exam. At the completion of the course, Dr. J’onzz asked her to stay after the final and encouraged her to apply to an open research assistant position at the lab he supervised on campus.

It was the same lab where Alex sits, two years later, on autopilot plucking away at secondary applications for med school. Her experiment still has a half hour to go but her body clock wanted her to be asleep three hours ago. Since the party last weekend set not only her work schedule but her sleep schedule off kilter, she’s been running on fumes ever since.

The not-so-distant whirring of machines sets a familiar tune to her struggle but not even the routine sounds of the lab can spark her lulling brain. Alex closes her eyes and in her mind starts to visualize a productive version of herself. A version who can run on three to five hours of sleep and still make it to the gym in the morning before classes. Some sort of machine who can power through the haze of exhaustion, complete her applications, and still have time for a social life and this thing called friends that Kara’s always nagging her about.

A tap on her shoulder breaks her out of this daydream and at once Alex realizes three things: one, that she’s somehow dozed off for 20 minutes; two, that she’s drooling down her chin; and three, that Dr. J’onzz is witnessing her at peak human train wreck and still manages to look somewhat proud of her.

“I presume your house would prove a more comfortable place to sleep than a lab stool.” Dr. J’onzz keeps his arms crossed comfortably over his chest and though he’s close enough to the door, he doesn’t casually lean against it.

It has always amazed Alex the ease with which he commanded authority and respect with just enough disarming gentleness that you weren’t afraid of him. Once, during a particularly intensive experiment during her junior year, they’d spent about eight hours straight in the lab on a Saturday with nothing more to do but watch machines work and adjust as needed. 

Around hour four Kara arrived with food and disappeared as quickly as she came. Her tornado of activity and sisterly affection shifted the topic of conversation to their respective families - Alex glossing over her past with enough detail to get the point across. In return, Dr. J’onzz told her how he was born Jon Jones to an unconventional but loving family - his father a blues guitarist and his mother a local political activist. They’d legally changed their last name to J’onzz and his first name to J’onn when he was six in the midst of some sort of anti-establishment protest.

It was implied that Dr. J’onzz, as buttoned up as he seemed, still retained the rebellious streak of his parents and in his name retained that more formally. 

Ever since Alex has been fascinated by the enigma that is her mentor. An enigma who’s currently looking at her like he might actually use his power as supervisor to kick her out of the lab if she doesn’t stop zoning in and out of the real world. “You’re right,” She says finally, closing her laptop. “Five more minutes to finish up and I’ll go.”

It isn’t abnormal for lab employees to come and go at all hours of the day and night, they all have special issue keys from campus security that they have to guard with their lives or else. A necessary evil considering experiments don’t necessarily care about silly things like appropriate times or sleep schedules. Dr. J’onzz makes idle conversation about her experiment and then starts to explain the work that brought him to the lab at two in the morning. Alex gets caught up discussing methods with Dr. J’onzz when her machine makes the telltale buzzing noise that indicates it’s done.

When she finishes getting to a place with her results where she feels comfortable leaving it’s been more like 15 or 20 minutes. Dr. J’onzz insists on walking her down the big hill and the few blocks to the lot where she parks her car. Though it’s accepted that they work all kinds of hours, he always tries to make sure they stay as safe as possible when they’re working at night and in the early morning hours. He stands on the sidewalk and waves as she pulls out of the parking space, she waves back tiredly and makes her way home.

*

Her body is shaking and for a brief, terrifying moment Alex’s mind jumps to the conclusion that they’re experiencing an earthquake. She startles on the couch and mentally tries to remember which doorway is the most structurally sound in the house. She barely rolls onto the floor when she realizes a couple things: there isn’t an earthquake, Kara is shaking her awake, and she hadn’t even made it back to her bed when she got home.

Kara, perhaps sensing that she’s sent Alex into a delirious panic, smiles that award winning smile and just says, “Pancakes?”

Alex’s stomach grumbles and then she grumbles out a few half words, enough for her sister to realize that she’s down for pancakes but not down for words. She lays back down and schools her heartbeat to a resting, non-panic level. Her eyes slip back shut and when she opens them again her senses are overwhelmed with the smell of Kara’s famous pancakes.

There isn’t anything complicated or extravagant about Kara’s pancake recipe, just the hint of cinnamon that wafts through the air and adds a little bit of kick to the sweet dough. Kara brings Alex a plate stacked with three pancakes, a bottle of syrup, and a fork; all presented on a tv tray with a napkin and a glass of orange juice balanced precariously on top.

“You’re my hero,” Alex groans as she sits up and delicately balances the tray on her lap. She slathers her pancakes in syrup and uses the side of her fork to cut a more-than-bite-sized hunk off. It’s the very definition of biting off more than she can chew but Alex needs food and she needs it now. She chases her first big bite with a gulp of orange juice. “Seriously, have I told you lately you’re my favorite sister?”

Kara rolls her eyes with a smile. “I’m your only sister.”

“Lucky you.”

Alex devotes the rest of her energy to breakfast. Eventually Kara goes back into the kitchen to make her own stack and Alex is free to shovel food into her face like a starved animal. When she finishes she takes her tray full of dishes to the kitchen and routinely starts to wash her own dishes as well as the prep dishes Kara racked up from cooking.

They move around each other in the otherwise undersized kitchen like a seamless unit. With the dishes clean and their stomachs full, the sisters resign themselves to another day.

Kara calls dibs on the shower first which gives Alex a few extra minutes to close her eyes, try to clear her thoughts, and pretend that counts as extra sleep. Kara exits the bathroom in a cloud of steam and Alex silently prays to the shower gods that she isn’t stuck with an ice cold shower.

“It’s all yours.” Kara quips as she passes Alex’s room.

The water is still way too hot which is Alex’s preference between their normal options of way too hot or ice cold. That means that Mike is probably going to be stuck with the ice cold shower. Serves him right, Alex thinks as she dips in and out of the near scalding stream to avoid second degree burns.

Sometimes Kara takes MUNI to her early class but she has to be there even earlier for a presentation so Alex had offered to drive her a few days ago. An offer she’s sorely regretting now that her bones cry out for at least five more hours of sleep. It means getting to campus way earlier than she would have liked but she’s been sacrificing for Kara for years now so it’s second nature.

Alex packs herself a Clif bar and some fruit so she doesn’t have to buy food on campus and goes out to warm up the car. Kara follows a few minutes later and their commute to campus is consumed by a rote argument over which route would be faster or slower until they get to campus and it’s a moot point.

Kara gives Alex a big hug and attempts to ruffle her hair as they part ways. Alex swats her away but watches her go affectionately. Then it’s off to the student union to give the illusion that she’s the kind of productive human being that goes to the union and actually gets work done.

*

Being productive looks more like disconnecting from campus wifi so she can take three minutes to connect to it again. Then Alex opens up a web browser and logs in to her student account to check her email. After she's checked her email and replied to every single message, even the ones that don’t necessarily need a reply, she opens up the med school secondary applications on her computer.

Once the applications are open it’s like suddenly every person in the union is the most interesting person Alex has ever seen in her life. She plugs in her headphones and opens up Pandora, she plays her 90s station and makes up a teen movie backstory for every person that passes her by based on the song that’s playing when she sees them.

She identifies the popular girl that all the guys want to ‘Wannabe’ and the loner with a heart of gold while ‘My Own Worst Enemy’ blasts in her ears. Alex has just marked out the jock who really wants to be an artist and the shy girl who really is the hot girl when she sees a familiar face. The girl from the party, Maggie, Alex reminds herself of the name, is walking straight for her table with a smile on her face that suggests they’re old friends.

For a few brief moments Alex wonders how rude it would be to keep her headphones in and pretend she can neither see nor hear a person standing right in front of her. But considering she’s already made the fatal mistake of purposeful eye contact she’s pretty much fucked at this point.

She pulls the buds out of her ears and plasters on what she hopes looks like a genuine enough smile to pass for personable.

“I almost didn’t recognize you without a drunk frat boy hulking over you.” Maggie sits down across from Alex, breaking the imaginary bubble that any respectable person knows exists in the sacred space that is the student union.

Maxwell is really much more of a rich entitled jerk archetype but Alex feels like she’s splitting hairs on that one so she lets it slide.

“Are you disappointed you can’t swoop in and save the day?” Alex knows the comment rides the fine line between snippy and playful but there’s something about Maggie that makes her want to stomp all over that line.

“Actually I left my armor in my other bag.”

“That’s too bad.”

Maggie’s smile broadens like they’ve got some sort of inside joke going and Alex catches her face trying to mirror that smile so she tries to clamp down on that instinct. The result is somewhere between a grimace and a wince. Alex tucks her long hair behind her ears and ducks her head to study something nonexistent on the corner of her computer screen.

“What are you working on?” Maggie gestures at the computer and despite her distinct lack of studious behavior, Alex is glad she’s at least got one person fooled.

Alex could be a pompous jerk and shove the med school applications in Maggie’s face like that somehow makes her a better person. She’s known people like that, hell, if she’s being honest she’s been that person. Then there’s the little Kara voice that lives in the back of her head that’s nagging her about how she doesn’t really have any friends that aren’t Kara’s friends too. Kara’s always telling her that she’s going to wake up one day and realize that she blew through her college experience and didn’t stop to enjoy the fun parts too.

It’s sort of a pain in the ass to have a little sister that’s so wise.

“I wasn’t,” Alex closes her laptop because what’s the point. “I opened up a bunch of tabs and files and music and then people watched instead.”

“Ah, classic procrastination tactics. Well, you really had me fooled and that’s not an easy thing to do.” Maggie leans in and whispers like it’s a secret between the two of them.

Alex doesn’t quite get the joke but then again she doesn’t quite understand anything in the little she knows about Maggie.

“I’ve got class in a couple hours so I figured I’d kill some time but I can go if you want to get back to not working.” Maggie continues but trails off at the end like, for the first time, she’s unsure about the state of her welcome.

“No,” Alex blurts out with urgency that she surprises herself with. “I mean, I’m too tired to focus anyway.”

“Long night?”

It’s enough of a window for Alex to talk about her comfort zone. She talks about the lab and tries to explain her current experiment in layman terms and is impressed when Maggie’s eyes only glaze over a little. Maggie explains that she’s in the Criminology department but she’s dabbled a little in the sciences, forensic mostly.

“I understood every fifth word you said so I guess those classes paid off.” Maggie quips and Alex gets a bit too excited trying to see what else Maggie understands until her eyes glaze all the way over.

Maggie’s in the middle of telling Alex about the trip she wants to take to the body farm in Tennessee when her phone starts buzzing. Maggie looks down at it and curses.

“Something wrong?” Alex asks feeling something close to disappointment that Maggie’s stopped talking.

“I completely forgot that I’m supposed to walk my girlfriend to class,” Maggie stands up and shoves her phone in her pocket. It’s a good thing she’s not looking at Alex who can feel the journey that her face went on and doesn’t want Maggie to think that she thinks there’s something wrong with that. There’s nothing wrong with that, nothing at all. Alex attributes the looping feeling in her stomach to surprise and disappointment that their engaging conversation has to end. “Hey, let me see your phone.”

“This is a weird time to decide to rob me.” Everything about Alex’s overcompensatory humor is so over the top she might as well make finger guns and have an exploding cigar hanging out of her mouth like Bugs Bunny. Still she fishes her phone out of her bag and hands it over to Maggie.

After a few moments of anticipatory silence, Maggie starts messing around with Alex’s phone and for a second Alex is confused as to why she thought it was a good idea to hand her phone to Maggie at all.

“Here,” Maggie hands back the phone with a self-satisfied smirk. “Text me the next time you’re too tired to work and we’ll get coffee instead.”

Maggie sweeps off so quickly she actually generates a slight breeze and Alex remembers, oh yeah, she’s got to go walk her girlfriend to class. Her new friend Maggie has a girlfriend.

Somehow that knowledge doesn’t make Alex any more productive.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As always comments and kudos are appreciated but, like, you do you gentle reader.

**Author's Note:**

> I can't commit to a posting schedule because my 2017 resolution was to stop lying so damn much but it shouldn't be years between chapters. That I can promise. As always comments and kudos are appreciated because writers are nothing if not very very vain and sensitive souls.


End file.
